The Commission has adopted the draft budget 2014 amounting to €142.01 billion in commitment appropriations and €135.9 billion in payment appropriations. The 2014 draft budget is some 6% lower than this year's for both commitments and payments.

"We present this draft budget today because the Lisbon Treaty clearly states that the Commission must do this by the 1 July at the latest", says EU Commissioner for Financial programming and Budget, Janusz Lewandowski. "However, we will adjust our proposal later on in the light of the final outcome on the 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) adoption procedure".

The Commission has prepared the 2014 draft budget based on the latest stage of the current MFF negotiations. The 2014 amount is based on the condition that the additional budget resources to cover the payment needs in 2013 as proposed by the Commission are agreed on time in 2013.

In the meantime, and despite cuts, the draft 2014 budget shows a 3.3% increase in commitments in the "Competitiveness for growth and jobs" area (heading 1a) as the EU's reduced resources must focus on measures to tackle unemployment and generate growth. These include Horizon 2020 – the EU's new funding programme for research and innovation (almost €9bn), the Youth Employment Initiative (€3.6 billion), the Connecting Europe Facility (close to €2bn) and support measures for Europe's businesses, in particular from Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Restraint on administrative expenditure (Heading 5)

For the second year running, the Commission is proposing a 1 % reduction in its staff numbers (excluding the impact of the accession of Croatia), as part of its proposal to reach a 5% reduction of staff over five years.

The Commission also proposes a 1.1% cut in discretionary areas of its own administrative expenditure.

The overall increase in heading 5 is mainly due to the growing number of pensioners and the costs relating to the accession of Croatia.

Relatively speaking…

The 2014 draft budget amounts to 1.05% of the EU GNI in commitments (against 1.15% in budget 2013) and 1.01% of it in payments (1.1% in 2013). In other words, as it is a smaller percentage of the annual wealth produced by the Member States it represents a significant cut in both relative and absolute terms.